Doves guitarist uses the moon as "massive delay pedal"

6th Apr 2010 | 10:08

Jez Williams: "It doesn't get more prog than that"

We have to admit, when we saw this story on a lazy Easter Sunday, we thought it was an April Fool. But apparently not.

According to an interview in The Oberver newspaper promoting the band's forthcoming best-of, The Places Between, Doves guitarist Jez Williams recently bounced a riff off the moon at Jodrell Bank observatory in Cheshire, UK.

Assisted by the facility's resident astrophysicist Dr Alastair Gunn, who "had a load of dials on a box", Williams "plugged into it, [then] he just dialled the moon, like you do... and two and half seconds later it [the riff] comes back.

"It messes up the signal beyond recognition, it's pretty wild. We've got a recording of it that we'll definitely use at some stage."